Snakehead: the extent to which Chinese organised crime groups are involved in human smuggling from China to the UK

Abstract

With human smuggling, trafficking and associated areas such as modern slavery consistently in the news over the past decade governments have established and reinforced a narrative whereby evil organised criminals are responsible for driving the numbers of people migrating. This despite much academic evidence to contrary. Snakeheads have long been linked to facilitating human smuggling from China and tick all the stereotypical boxes for an organised crime ‘folk devil’. An ominous name; shadowy methods; allegedly highly exploitative and a reassuringly ‘foreign’ threat, Snakeheads fit neatly into the narrative above. Using a range of sources including qualitative interviews, survey data, Government statistics and Freedom of Information Requests this this paper suggests the reality is very different. That Snakeheads do not fit snuggly with media and government perceptions of who smuggles people from China or how they interact with organised crime. It suggests that the smuggling from China is not overseen by nefarious organised crime groups but criminal entrepreneurs.